Not the right choice of words when CHina declares it has 'quality'- everyone knows what Chinese quality stands for.
On the positive side, world looks at population as an opportunity rather than burden like they did 30 years ago.
China on Wednesday sought to downplay India overtaking it as the worlds most populous nation with 142.86 crore people, saying that it still has a quality workforce of close to 900
news.rediff.com
The Chinese have a demographic & consumer base collapse coming their way thanks to 2 things:
1) The ultra-rapid pace of industrialization which meant that the Chinese population experienced in 1 generation what the European industrial revolutions took 6-7 generations to arrive at. This meant a lot of people moved into the urban, childless way of life all at the same time, all too soon.
2) The disastrous self-inflicted wound of the One-Child policy which meant even those living the rural way of life which otherwise lends itself well to having lots of children (after all, on a farm kids are free labour) were forced to adopt the urbanized practices, even though there is nothing urban about their environment.
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Urbanization once attained, either by choice or force, does lead to a marked uptick in spending power of the individual. No need to save for college education for your second kid? Go & buy yourself a better car instead. Once comfortable with that lifestyle, its impossible to go back to the old way of life - unless the situation demands it once more. Problem is, it takes 25 years to grow a 25 year-old human that creates labour & consumption, no shortcuts.
In India, urbanization is happening at a far more 'natural' pace. So the windfall population collapse is not going to happen, the tapering off of population growth would be spread out over multiple generations which is how its supposed to be. People complain that we aren't developing fast enough, but developing too fast brings with it problems of its own which CEOs or Tech gurus that think in 5-year timeframes instead of 40 fail to appreciate.
Reflecting on Point #2, past governments in India (looking at you, Indira Gandhi) suffered from a similar lack of informed vision & tried to create an engineered demographic collapse not unlike the One-Child policy, except with far less subtlety & civic sense than the CCP (which is
really saying something). They tried to implement forced sterilization, as though people were stray dogs. Thankfully, it didn't last long. Nevertheless, we were a hair's breadth away from seeing a similar population collapse as China...except without any of the development preceding it.
In 1976, men across India were drastically changing their behaviour. Some were abandoning the beds inside their homes to sleep in fields; others were skipping major festivals and public gatherings. Those who in the past had taken the train freely, without a ticket, were finding alternative...
qz.com
